The Big Rewind (3 page)

W
ithin a week, KitKat's crime scene was cleaned up and the papers had a new headline, a new corpse, a new scandal. Her body had been shipped home to New Hampshire to be buried. All that was left to do was pack up her stuff so the landlord could rent out her apartment. The super swore us all to secrecy about what had happened there.

Hillary was charged with cleaning the place out and put an invite on Facebook saying that everyone was welcome to come take what they wanted on Friday night, bring booze, bring food. Her family had held a private memorial service, so this was the time for all of us to say the good-byes we couldn't post on Twitter.

I knew I wasn't going to be able to go down there alone. It was going to take everything I had to walk through that door again, to get a drink from that same kitchen where, just a week ago, her blood had been spilled. Sid agreed to go with me in lieu of our planned
CHiPs
marathon, and even as we stood at her doorway, my hand shook in his. He'd only met KitKat once or twice; he'd told her that her red velvet cake was better than his grandmother's, and she'd posted it as her favorite review on her website. By the time we got there someone with a blue sticker had already claimed her recipe binder.

Crying tattooed girls leafed through her record collection, and boys in oversized glasses and sweater vests hung around her decoupage kitchen table, where the liquor and chips were stocked. I didn't know most of her friends, but I recognized Natalie and Mac over by the bookcase, who gestured to me with the traditional hipster greeting of a chin toss and a glance away, pretending to be in the middle of something so important that it couldn't be disturbed for a proper hello. KitKat had introduced me to Natalie at one of her Stitch 'n' Bitch nights, and Natalie, in turn, introduced me to Mac, whom she had, at the time, been dating. In addition to managing the Brenner Gallery, Natalie also maintained a blog about her dating adventures titled
The Village Bicycle
. Although she and Mac had broken up, if Natalie stopped hanging out with all the people she'd slept with, she'd probably have to leave Brooklyn.

“This is the weirdest memorial I have ever been to,” Sid said under his breath.

Weird, twee, and oddly appropriate. KitKat would have been totally into this scene if it had been for anyone else. Even in death, she embodied the heart of Barter Street. For a moment, I forgot my part in her passing and just enjoyed the high of interconnectivity we were all sharing.

That all vanished when I saw Hillary, perched on the kitchen windowsill, smoking, ignoring everyone. She looked twice as old as when I'd last seen her, at KitKat's thirtieth birthday party: the blue streaks faded out of her blond hair, left-arm tattoo sleeve covered by a chunky gray sweater, no jewelry but the twisted-rope metal of the wedding ring her ska-band-trombonist husband had given her. She was the first person I'd felt genuine sorrow for other than myself, but I couldn't find the words to express any of it.

“H-hey, Hillary,” I stammered. “How're you holding up?”

She flicked her cigarette butt out the window and shrugged. “I just want this all over with.” She sighed. “God, all these people are so fucking annoying. Frauds, all of them. I should have just dumped this shit off at the Salvation Army.”

Two shrieks erupted from the bedroom, and Hillary huffed herself off the windowsill to investigate. I followed, taking the glass of red wine Sid held out to me like he was in the water line at a marathon. Jylle, with her blond bangs and cowboy boots, was crumpled in a heap on the bed, clutching the sleeve of a red vintage dress, while Brandi, with sob-streaked mascara, held the rest.

“This . . . is . . . my . . . favorite,” Jylle sobbed in staccato. “KitKat would
want
me to have it!”

“You're too fat for it!” Brandi said with a snarl through her own black tears.

“For fuck's sake.” Hillary rolled her eyes. She snatched the pieces of the dress out of both their hands and shoved it onto me. “It's yours, Jett. Enjoy. You two, get out.”

They stared at her. Hillary threw shade that would have made a drag queen shiver. I looked at the whole scene and then at the dress in my hands. The girls gathered themselves up and left without another outburst. I shoved the sleeve into my pocket and tossed the dress over my shoulder, following Hillary until I got back to Sid.

“What was that all about?” he whispered.

I shook my head. Hillary returned with a Whole Foods bag and a sheet of green garage-sale labels with two already missing. “Just stick these on whatever you want,” she said. “And you can keep Baldrick. I went ahead and claimed his food and water bowls for you. Our aunt Jenny made them; they should stay with him. I've got his cat carrier too, if you want it.”

“Sure,” I said, holding up my labels. “I'll . . . uh . . . go claim it.”

Sid refilled the bourbon in his glass and dropped two octopus ice cubes in with a barely audible clink. I put a sticker on the ice cube trays. I didn't need or want them, but I felt like I had to take something, like accepting a homemade cookie even though you couldn't stand raisins.

I took my wine and my date over to where Mac was thumbing
through KitKat's DVDs. “I always wondered where she got the name Baldrick from,” he said, holding up
Blackadder Goes Forth
.

“She always said that Monty Python got overquoted,” said Natalie, taking a seat on the ottoman and adjusting one of the lion-mane scarves she wore effortlessly draped around her neck. “She said once you heard a douchebag in a fedora recite ‘Dead Parrot' for the hundredth time, you had to start exploring other areas of British comedy.”

“He's just sleeping!” yelled some drunk, fedora-sporting douchebag from the other room.

Natalie rolled her eyes. “And that one's with me,” she muttered.

“Here,” Mac said, passing the DVDs to me. “You got the cat, you should get the source of his name too.”

That was when I teared up. I felt like a thief. Everyone in this room had adored her, and here I was, sharing their same grief. Was I no better than the girl who'd tried to take my seat on the subway? I hadn't even told anyone but Sid about finding her body.

“We'll all miss her,” Mac said, giving me a side-hug. “She was a real bright spot on this block.”

I let him hug me. It made me feel less like an outsider. I took a deep breath and Natalie squeezed my hand. I took a drink and looked around. It was okay to mourn. It was okay to be sad in this place. No one was taking a survey of who was really her friend and who was a faker. Well, no one except Hillary, but she seemed to like me. And for the first time since I had arrived on Barter Street, I felt like I belonged to the neighborhood.

“Oh man, remember that time she and Bronco hosted the
Nick Arcade
party when his annual Fourth of July Calvinball game got rained out?” Natalie asked.

“I still have the T-shirt where she wrote our high scores on the back!” Mac exclaimed. “I haven't gotten that far in
Golden Axe
since, and I have it on my fucking phone.”

Bronco. All of her other friends were present, but her boyfriend was nowhere to be seen. “Why isn't Bronco here?” I asked.

“No one's heard from him since we all found out,” Natalie said. “I bet he's pretty beat-up about it.”

“Hillary said he was at the funeral,” Mac said. “But he isn't answering his phone, hasn't posted to Facebook, nothing.”

“I'm worried about him,” Natalie said. “I'm going to drop by tomorrow and bring my vegan lasagna.”

Group visits were a huge part of Barter Street life, complete with cookies and semi-ironic casseroles. When I first moved in, I joined a Facebook group dedicated to posting photos of ugly casserole dishes in an ongoing game of who could find the most hideous. I wondered who had gotten KitKat's yellow and white paisley dish, which had taken prizes for both ugliness outside and delicious chicken-and-bacon goodness inside. Whoever had the pink tag had already laid claim to it.

Natalie pulled a panda alarm clock out of her bag and checked the time. “Which means I'd better get to the store now if I'm going to get some soy cheese.” She pointed to me, then withdrew her hand. “I was going to ask if you were up for going to Axis for Homework on Saturday, but I guess it doesn't seem right to go without KitKit.”

Homework was a weekly dark-eighties dance party that Natalie, KitKat, and I had dropped by occasionally. I thought about the tape still sitting on my dining room table and briefly toyed with the idea of contacting DJ MissTaken and asking her to play it in tribute to KitKat. But I didn't even know what was on it, and chances were, MissTaken wasn't lugging a boombox around with her mixing board.

“Maybe we'll just get coffee,” I said. “Give me a call.”

It was hugs and call-mes all around, and then Natalie left, dragging her drunken date out with her. Mac wandered off into the kitchen to intrude on a conversation about Faith No More, leaving Sid and me sitting awkwardly next to the now-empty bookcase. I had a torn dress, some DVDs, an ice cube tray, and her cat. I didn't really need anything else.

S
aturday night found me halfheartedly watching a rerun of
30 Rock
when I heard a knock on the door. It was Hillary, holding a big pink Betsey Johnson box and a binder. “Here,” she said, passing them to me. “I don't know what to do with these—they're her old mix tapes. Doesn't seem right to just throw them out, but no one took them.”

I muttered a thanks and tried not to show my hesitation. She might as well have given me a bag of KitKat's mismatched socks or her high school yearbooks. I didn't have a tape player, and even if I did, the tapes would have meant nothing more to me than a brief nostalgic trip with Ace of Base or something new to download. Hillary would have been more likely to know the people who'd made the tapes and might have even made a few herself. It didn't seem right that they should be handed over to a stranger.

“You want to come in for a drink?” I asked, not knowing what else to say and hoping I had an extra bottle of wine in case she agreed.

“Nah,” she replied. “I'm catching the late train back to Boston. I kinda can't stand it here.” Baldrick hopped off the couch and rubbed against her legs. She crouched down and scratched his face. “Take good care of him,” she said. “He was KitKat's baby. She found him behind our house when he was just a kitten and
took him with her everywhere for the first month she had him. She wouldn't go anyplace he couldn't go too—he used to sit on her lap at the movies. One time she accidentally ate one of his cat treats in the dark, thinking it was a Raisinette.”

KitKat had never told me that story. There were a lot of stories that she never got to tell me. I'd always liked her but never made enough of an effort to go downstairs and ask her out for coffee, dinner, a movie night. I told myself it was because we were both busy, but the truth was, even with only two years' age difference between us, she was the cool senior to my awkward freshman. I hadn't wanted her to think I was some needy dork trying to hang with the queen bee, so I'd avoided any situation where I might look desperate.

Add that to the pile of regrets.

Hillary stood up and gave me a grim little smile. “KitKat really liked you,” she said. “She may have been way too into this whole stupid scene, but she thought you were genuinely cool. Not like the rest of those pretentious fucks.” She put a cigarette in her mouth, but didn't light it.

I opened the door a little wider. “You can smoke out the living room window,” I offered. “One for the road, right?”

She came in and sat on the low bookcase, opened the window, and flicked open a silver Zippo. Baldrick jumped into her lap and she petted him with her free hand. There was a momentary flicker of happiness across her face. “A cat and a cigarette,” she said. “What more could any girl want?”

“Maybe a cupcake?”

“Why, you got one?”

I didn't.

“Figures,” she said. “And some Brony covered in shitty tattoos took her recipe book. He's in for a surprise. You know what her secret was?”

Once again, I didn't know the answer. I shook my head and she continued. “Cake mix,” she said. “Just ordinary cake mix. She added stuff, yeah, but it wasn't even the good shit from
Whole Foods—it was the kind of dollar-store cake mix that's so cheap the company can't even afford a box, just the pouch.” She laughed, but I could see there were little fringes of tears on her thick black lashes.

“When we were in Girl Scouts, she was so awful at baking that our troop leader, Mrs. C, finally just gave her the badge out of pity. She didn't improve when she got here; she made these cupcakes from scratch and they all tasted like variations on concrete. She must have tried a dozen different recipes before going to cake mix. Did you ever have the ones she made with the rose petals and custard? They were amazing.” She sighed and wiped her eyes, taking plenty of her mascara off with the back of her hand. “I'm going to really miss her.”

“We all will,” I said. “Have you had a chance to talk to Bronco?”

“Not since the funeral,” she replied. “I like that guy, I really do, but he was acting, sort of, you know, weird.” She exhaled like it exhausted her. “And not weird like the rest of her friends—present company excluded, of course—just, jumpy. Distant. I can't really explain it.”

She took a last drag and looked around for an ashtray. I got her the plate I'd used for the leftover pizza I'd eaten for dinner. She snuffed out her cigarette and slid off the bookcase. “Look,” she said. “I didn't just come here for a smoke and to give you KitKat's shit. I need a favor.”

“Anything,” I said, hoping she'd ask for something I could actually deliver. I'd already failed her on the cupcake front.

“Natalie said you do some private investigator work,” she said.

“I work for a PI, yeah, but it's all insurance fraud, and all I do is proofread—”

She cut me off like she wasn't even listening. “I know she's just another dead body in a city full of them, but she was my sister. I need all the help I can get on this. I need to know who murdered my sister, Jett, and I need to know they'll be punished.”

“I'm sure the cops have a handle on it—”

“Half of the murders in this city go unsolved every year,” she
said insistently. “I don't want KitKat to be in the unsolved half. They have no motive, no suspects, and one fingerprint. One lousy fingerprint. The chances of it matching anybody are astronomical. Please, Jett, whatever connections you have will help.”

How was I supposed to say no to that plea? “I-I'll see what I can do,” I offered. “But I can't make any promises.”

That seemed to satisfy her. She gave Baldrick a last stroke and gave me a hug. “Whatever you can do,” she said. “Just let me know.”